[Megathread] Tera Online - Now Free-to-Play

Well.honest question... aside from combat ... is there anything special about tera? I mean... Combat could be amazing but if the rest of the game is nothing more than glorified korean grindfest, it wont last long enough on western market..

From what I've read about TERA, their big focus is the combat system. It is a Korean game but they are doing a Western version separate from the Korean version. So my question is, with them changing the game to make it more appealing to a Western audience, will we get as much out of the game as the Koreans or will we lose some of the story or content in our version of the game? If the only difference is some cultural references and less grind then it may not be half bad.

Tera is not first game trying rework their system for western market.. but .. in the past.. it was just decreasing kills required for quests and/or increasing XP gain so you will reach level cap faster..

But in my eyes.. it's still a grind.. I am not Anti-Tera fan..but I just have very bad experience with korean MMORPGs... So that's why I am asking if there is anything so special about Tera aside from combat.

As I said in some other thread..for now..the only true next-gen MMO in my eyes is Guild Wars 2 ..but I would to have more choices TBH.

I'm keeping an eye on it, but I'm not expecting anything revolutionary. If it's good, I'll give it a try.

"It's not what we don't know that gets us into trouble; it's what we know for sure that just ain't so." ~ Mark Twain"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time" ~ Jesus of Nazareth"把它放在我的屁股，爸爸" ~ Dalai Lama

With the amount of people wanting the same thing, I wouldn't be surprised to see it happen sometime in the near future.

Tera looks...interesting. Korean games have always been iffy to me, but they look to be trying really hard to make it appealing to everyone. I guess we'll just have to wait for some of the beta to go by to get a good judge on it. I will probably try out the Beta, it looks interesting enough.

I once had a character named "Clamslam" but Blizzard deemed it inappropriate.

Rather than simply locking on to enemies and doing damage based on invisible in-game statistics, Tera's combat is purely positional. It lacks lock-on aiming, but you if physically hit your enemy, you'll always do damage. Missing attacks works the same way -- dodging and rolling out of the way negates damage -- so you have to carefully dictate the range and position of both melee attacks and ranged spells.

Enemies mimic the same tactics in a fight that most players use. Depending on their level and type, the enemy A.I. can dodge attacks, heal allies, use tanks to soak up damage, and apply team strategies in order to take down players.

If the combat is as good as people say it will be a huge success. Excellent combat - > excellent pvp. And pvp holds a lot of players. Just hope they get enough variety into it so they won't end up like wow pvp, which completely sucks.

Tired of clicking your target first and going through a standard rotation, loot, and move on?
This is pretty much last decade gameplay is it not? Tera handles it like how its promoted. You dont target, you simple approach your target untill you are in either melee or ranegd range ( your crosshair shows how much M you are away from your target so you dont have to guess, this is for ranged mostly )
Melee dps will start to use their basic attacks to generate rage like a warrior/druid, and then unleash special powerfull attacks with it. such as stuns, shouts, knockdowns ( that ALWAYS knock down, not x% ) and charged superstrikes that consume a lot, take time to charge, but slam down with oh so much destructive force that it feels totally worth using the skills.
mele tanks start with a full powerbar, and quickly utilize their aggro abilitys and slams/strieks to build up aggro as they go, and prepare for incomming damage as they see it approaching, the lancer will proceed to block with his shield ( and everyone behind him will recieve the same benefit ) for 100% blocked damage. the warrior will use his evasive skills to avoid the damage, either jump behind the target, away from, or whatever, you can go 360 degrees with this. or jump in the air and get temporary full immunity.
Sounds OP? try timing these blocks/evases monsters can lash at you with a 1 second notice in the higher levels so it takes Skill with a capital S.
Ranged simply stands at 19m distance and lets loose, however, the further you stand away, the higher your damage penalty is ( reduced by about 40% ) so you will want to stand aay for about 10m, which is still a considerable distance, this way all your special attacks will hit, and your basic attack wont recieve a damage penatly.
There are no castbars ( except charge bars to let you know a skill you charge is going to hit for a shitload, and this enables some classes, like archer, and berserker to slowly move around during the charge to reposition for max impact )
Ths system is really fun, and really gets going during dungeon boss fights, who constantly jump around the room, use massive aoe strikes and everything else, you will never find yourself standing static, youre always on the move, tanks, dps, and even healers are very much involved ine very aspect of the combat. a healer sometimes needs to get next to his tank to give him a powerfull pinpoint aoe heal and then quickly has to back out again before getting hurt. ( dont worry, you all have tools for that, either dodges, backsteps or emergency maneuveres )

- Korean grindfest
Welcome to Tera, and MMO that follows the MMO code of killing 10 evil boars, 6 nasty crabs, collect 8 plants for a magical antidote, your typical escort quest, and your phased in Defend the town / carriage with special values quests.
Tera is no different in its questing then wow, they both have the same kind of quests, and they are all spread out equally so youre not out killing the same monsters, or different ones for that matter, 10 times in row. there is plenty of diversity, altho wow still handles it better but only since cataclysm might i add.
Tera however, wins ground in the way its executed, no select target, cast arcane blast x3, arcane missiles, and move on. Mobs take a little longer to die and depending on your class it can take anywhere between 10 to 20 seconds to kill one mob, this of course is controlled by how much MP you have generated, or left. the more MP, the faster you will be able to dispose of your target because you dont have to use a basic attack to charge your MP with, and those hit for moderate to crap damage.
At level 50, currently ( max level ) and never found myself to be grinding, i think i once, or twice did a repeatable quest just to bounce up one bar, so i killed 20 jaguars on top of the 10 i already killed for the quest, got XP for 2 repeatables turned in, and dinged, and moved on to the next area. this only happened like once or twice, i was not bothered by it at all since it only took me 5 minutes alltogether
I still have plenty of quests left in my log, and soem dungeon ones, plus dungeon repeatables. ( getting rewarded for killing dungeon trash every run is ever so satistfying, WoW please take notes )

Beta, release:
This month, NA/EU community testing will start, closed beta in a sense. this will continue till the summer season, which, after the game launched in japan, will start with its european and american open beta prio to release in Q4 2011. 2011 is a deadline set by american publisher en masse entertainment, they will not fiddle their way out of this, since they gave the community a clear promise, and exactly 1 year after korean release, this sounds plausible. the westernisation is comming along nicely, and now i hear you say, that shit again? like aion? what will change?
Teras westernisation is miinimal, what will be added? more content, from patches soon to be releaed in korea ( korea more or less launched incomplete, like vanilla wow, with no battlegrounds and only 2 dungeons ( like onyxia and mc back in the day ) but after just 1 month, battlegroudns have been added, and the first major patch is comming out the same time as Firelands raid for wow in 4.2 )
of course also translations and english voice acting, and what else remains to be seen.
What will be removed? almost nothing, there is however a controversial ( lol, nonsense ) race called the Elin that has some communitymembers going " lol lolicon" and in a sense, i can see teh resemblance, this race however is mature, lorewise, they are forest nymphs who took on the shape of their deity. and what will change with this race? the Elins have pretty short but cute dresses, however, you can see the pantys underneath, and while this isnt shocking, for some ppl its a dealbreaker, EME told themselves: do we keep it this way, or do we slightly change the art and farm a bigger fanbase? So the descision has been made: Elins robes, light armor and heavy armor will be slightly extended past the thighs to keep it PG16 :P I guess. I think not much of the matter, i dont play this race. So im indifferent about the changes

-Class balance:
The game is new, a month old, and battlegroudns have just been introduced. since this game is so much about Skill > Gear, i find that the balance so far is pretty smooth, but tbh, its really hard to tell, some players are mad skilled and cant easily kick anyones ass in worse gear, and others feel they are gimped by certain other classes, like how range sort of dominates the slow moving melee dps'ers. however, when i was in a battleground yesterday i saw that same berserker class totally rip away at sorceres, mystics and archers. Guess it comes down to YOU, and not the devs. The game has been patched already, a small one, wicth class balance updates. So the devs are paying attention.
Diversity is great, you have your 2 tanks, warrior ( evasion tank ) lancer ( shielded tank ) your melee dps ( berserker, heavy axe, charged attacks, great aoe ) your slayer ( fast mover, bigass sword, fast attacks, evasive ) your ranged dps ( sorcerer, the traditional mage, with many charged attacks and aoe + debuffs and CC ) and your archer ( traps, shots, rapid fires, roundhouse kicks! you name it ) and finally the healers, Priest ( your traditional has-a-tool-for-every-healing-situation class, with many escape abilitys, and the Mystic ( shaman, with pet summons, heals, debuffs and party power enhances )
I played them all past level 15, they are all fun, each class is apreciated and not benched for another, and they all dominate in the hands of the right player. I play a sorcerer and warrior, the warrior remidns me of ryu hayabusa from ninja gaiden and kratos from god of war, while the sorcerer, strange as it sounds, remidns me of samus from metroid prime. the way i have to charge attacks and dodge the bosses moves just felt reminiscent.

Endgame content:
At the moment, we have this: at level 50 you can do your crafting, there are 2 HARD AS FUCK ( 1 never cleared before, not even by the koreans ) dungeons where your skill as a party and individual will be tested to the max ( think ninja gaiden endboss, x5, or something, or anything else that made you think ghmmm, shits hard, well this is hard, but a HURT sandwich on top ) frustrating then? heck no, the dungeon will either be tuned down, or whatever, this remains to be seen, there arent enough level 50's yet, and those that are, are more or less tetsing the high end dungeons for Bluehole studios at the moment ( beta testing was halted at lvl 36 at the time )
There is pvp, openworld and battlegrounds, in the eu/na version there will be pvp and pve servers, korea only has one type, and within those, there are certain pvp zones. popular zoens with many crafting materials waiting to be mined, thus heavily competetive. since this game has no factions, everyone becomes an enemy, from a lore standpoint i dont know how this would go, but well find out in our western version. Im sure it has more to do with being a champion from your faction and pwning others then it is about political strife and hatred ( all races get along fine in this day and age )
So in a nutshell:
- 2 dungeons, 5 man
- pvp openworld and battlegrounds
As the months go by, more content will be added, and in our eu/na versions, all the new stuff will be in there ( think more dungeons, more battlegrounds, and what not )
So what about raids? There hasent been any talk of raids yet. But the way tera plays out in dungeon play, its already strategic, you dont need 10 or 25 people so you seemingly have enough firepower to down a bigass monster, 5 is enough, and why not? if you make a wow dungeon, and you make it look like a raid, and you only let 5 people in, instead of 10, will there be any difference?
I understand how people like to take their entire team into a single place and duke it out, but in this game we gonna have to get used to the fact that raids will be small, if they will ever come ( im gonna go ahead and call 5 man endgame dungeons raids for that matter, since they become pretty damn big with multiple bosses that take 15 min to take down in SOME cases )
This is still a mystery to me as it is to you, the way raiding will play out, having said that, each new dungeon will have upgraded loot, difficulty, and plot development as to why it exsists and why it needs to be conquered.
Am I content with just 2 dungeons right now at max level? I sure am the dungeons are big, the bosses are hard, and this isnt because my gear sucks, im in full 50 blues ( golds = epic ) and im doing my assbest. but the bosses are cunning and they respond to your moves. if you just dodged a move, th boss can somehow tell, and starts doing some nifty shit cuz he knows you cant dodge it anyway. Frustrating much? hell no, i shouldnt have dodged the other time and just turned and ran away instead you reap what you sow. You fight, you die, you learn. And when a boss goes down, you honestly feel more proud with yourself then as a collective team. wow was all about yes WE did it! and thiese victorys feel a bit more personal, you feel like you handled everything correctly and thats why the bitch is down, almost forgetting you have 4 mates with ya who deserve equal credit, but are too busy slapping their own chest ^^.

Teras plusses:
- awesome combat
- awesome teamplay
- interesting dungeons and boss mechanics
- class diversity
- graphics and animations!
- armor and weapon eastetics ( each race/sex looks different when they wear the same item, its never the same.
- not grindy!! ( halleluja! )
- immersion factor is high ( the world feels huge, warcraft doesnt, you can fly over everything now, in tera you will never be able too, the scale is immense and there is no fog in the distance, its running on unreal engine 3 so the view is limitless, you can basically see the mountains a thousand miles away, and since its 2011, i think we can ejoy this

tera negatives:
- its still your kill 10 this, collect 5 that, escort, defend and explore quests. but its an mmo, whatchu gonna do? :/
- crafting system, right now, i wank. its super easy to reach 300 crafting with minimal trouble. its not the complex system that wow is, and for pro crafters this will sting, dunno if it wil lchange for na/eu yet. will have to wait and see.
- invisible walls, this doesnt happen in an open fiield or anything, but sometiems you will have 2 trees standing awfully close to each other, but just enough space for your small race character to hop through, and then you cant, youre stuck :S since the game has universal hitboxes, it sort of calculates that you are the size of a baraka ( biggest race ingame ) this is handled better by wow, that has hitboxes according to racial size. but then again, wow uses auto target, and this game uses target target. if you could be more evasive as a small race then there would be no reason to choose a bigger one, so from a designing perspective, i totally understand this.

TL;DR? I'd say so
-Combat system is great, fresh, fun, engaging
Korean grind? no, it follows the wow formula of questing, almost completely down to the letter
beta? closed beta starts this month, open beta after summer, release in nov or dec 2011.
endgame content? at the moment 2 dungeons and pvp battlegrounds, more will be added before eu/na release

Damn. Did i just type that much? ow well. just read it if you want an indepth, personal look on each subject, and otherwise stick to the TL;DR
And finally some helpfull links:

Update: Community Play Event for Europe and NA ended a few hours ago, we all at the European realm gathered up for a massive screenshot, the community is great, pacts and rivalrys are forged, and memorys made for a lifetime ( /end melodrama :P )

TERA EU first community testers, April 2011;

Furthermore, I will upload 3 video's created by me over the weekend, feast your eyes and ears, and enjoy!

TLDR no srs tho this isnt groundbreaking its been done before, most noteably with darkfall. This will be a grind centered game not in the common sense of killing mobs over n over for xp but in the way they approach content. check aion at end-game if u wanna see a refrence